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Jose has, like 40 birds in the boat, and he sets up these elaborate games. He has a Bird World cup in which Mexico always wins. Welcome back to what to Carry, what to Burn. My name is Blair Braverman. I'm a writer, an adventurer, and a dog sledder. And today we're meeting a guy named Jose Salvador Alvarenga, who's born in 1975 in El Salvador in a little town on the coast. His dad owns a flour mill. But when Jose grows up, he becomes a fisherman. And his personality is very live hard, play hard. Like, he's really good at fishing. He'll go out in his little boat, he'll catch a bunch of fish, he'll come back, he'll use the money he made and just party. He's drinking, he's dancing, he's drinking some more. One night he gets into a bar fight, and the details of this are a little bit foggy. Even Jose doesn't remember them. But somehow he goes up against a group of men who vastly outnumber him, and he ends up being stabbed 11 times. As he's recovering in the hospital, he learns that these guys have now put a hit out on him, like they are plotting to kill him, and they mean business. These guys will kill him when he gets out. So he goes on the run, which is not something he does lightly. This is the only place he knows. He has a girlfriend and he has a baby daughter he's leaving behind. But he also is trying really hard to stay alive. So he's not going to be good to them if he's murdered either. Jose takes off. He's basically walking to Mexico. And he ends up making his way to a place called Costa Azul, which is a little village right on the tip of Baja California, this peninsula that separates the more protected Sea of Cortez from the Pacific. Oce this is a place where people are suspicious of anyone new because there's a good amount of drug trafficking and they don't want to get involved. And Jose, too. On this journey, he has met some people. He has been offered the chance to run drugs up the coast, make a lot of money, but he doesn't want to get mixed up in that. He just wants to fish. He sort of wins people over in this village by just being super friendly and helpful. Like, he gets there, he starts picking up trash on the beach. If someone's carrying something heav, he'll rush over and help them carry it. He gives money to kids so they can buy candy. When other fishermen get into trouble, he's always first to volunteer to go help them out, to go rescue them if they need it. And pretty soon, people really like him. They know something's a little bit off. Like, he says he's Mexican, but they think he's not. His skin is a little bit lighter than everyone else's, so he gets sunburned easily. But he doesn't bother with sunscreen. He just wears a black balaclava over his face to protect his skin. So he's very recognizable from a distance. Multiple fishing bosses want to hire him. They figure out he's very good in a boat. And he moves into a little hut on the beach and just starts working. The way fishing works here. Teams of two men will go out together in a little boat out on the ocean. They'll be gone for a couple days. They're fishing for sharks and tuna. And then they come back with hundreds of pounds of fish and take a few days off and party and eat. It is a lifestyle that totally works for Joseph. He gets along with the whole town. He's always buying people drinks. Sometimes guys will get into fights. And he's really not a fighter. He doesn't get involved in those unless he's protecting someone. Like, there's a restaurant he really loves. And every now and then, a customer will get rowdy, and, you know, someone starts breaking furniture. Then he'll punch the guy out just to. Just to protect the restaurant he likes. Jose's at restaurants a lot because he has a huge appetite. He loves food. People start calling him piggy. One time, he is dog sitting for a friend, and he eats through all the food in the house. And so the friend comes back and finds Jose eating a bowl of dog kibble in milk like it's cereal. And the friend is like, oh, my God, Jose, you're gonna get sick. And he's like, well, the dogs are fine. But kibble aside, he actually really does care about good food. He likes physical pleasures. He likes spices and freshly chopped onion and tomato. Even when he's out on the boat, he always brings onion and cilantro and a cutting so he can have good flavor. He can have fresh food. He likes platters of shrimp. He loves tortillas. He likes the ladies. The ladies like him. Jose's best friend is a guy named Ray Perez. They're fishing partners. And when they're out on the boat together, it's like they're one brain with two bodies. They just work together so fluidly, they don't even have to talk. They'll be bailing or pulling in lines, whatever they're doing. Knocking out a shark that they hauled in. They refer to each other by nicknames that are typically reserved for married couples. That's how close they are. When Ray's mom gets sick, Jose gives him money to visit her. They just look out for each other on this particular day. It's mid November 2012, so Jose is in his mid-30s now. He's heading out fishing. But Ray can't come because Ray gets into trouble with the law sometimes and he has to go do some paperwork at the police station. You know, no big deal, he's on probation. So Jose starts asking around and he finds a young guy, 22 years old, named Ezekiel Cordoba. His nickname is Pinata and Ezekiel's a local soccer star. He's kind of a land based guy. In fact, he is afraid of the ocean because a psychic once told him that he would die at sea. But he wants to earn some money. He'll get $50 for the day if he goes with Jose. So he signs on and the two of them grab a boat. Jose's boss has a couple boats, so he doesn't necessarily use the same one each time. The one he grabs today is called Shrimper from the coast number three. And it's missing an anchor, but he doesn't use an anchor much anyway, so he doesn't really think about it. It's a good day, it's warm, it's breezy, he's got his balaclava on. They get in the boat and they just zoom straight out to sea. These boats he's using, just so we have an image of it, it's 23ft long. I looked up other things that are 23ft long just as a point of comparison, and this is extremely unhelpful. But apparently that's the length of the human small intestine if you unravel it end to end. But a more helpful comparison is picture like four mattresses end to end, and the boat is completely open. There's no roof, there's no way to go inside for shelter. It's basically a long dinghy and it has a few benches. The only container is this big turquoise plastic ice box like a, like a refrigerator on its side, which is where they put all the fish. The fish just go into this box. They're taking this boat number three way out to sea and a wind starts coming up. It's raising waves around them that are taller than they are. And Jose's in back, he's working the motor and this new kid Ezekiel is lying on the bow with his head over the edge. His job is to watch for anything they might hit, like a floating log or things like that. They're really flying. This boat is bouncing over the waves. It's crashing down hard. There's thick sprays of salt water just flying up beside them. Ezekiel's body is just bouncing into the air and smashing down again and again. And he is immediately nauseous. He doesn't have sea legs. He's not used to being in a boat. He is puking. He's hanging his head over the edge. And Jose's in back watching this. And he's like, great, I got a puker. I wish my buddy Ray was with me. It takes them several hours to get out to the fishing grounds. They're headed really far out to sea, and they lay out their line, which is really long. It's about 2 miles, 3 kilometers, and it has a bunch of hooks all along it. So once they lay it out, they're just chilling. They're waiting for the fish to bite. While they're waiting, the waves start changing. The wind is getting stronger. So instead of normal waves that are going one direction, these waves are going different directions at once and just crashing into each other. And they start crashing down over the boat. It starts filling with water. Ezekiel is freaking out. He's like, we're going to die. We're going to die out here. And Jose is like, can you not? We're fine. We've. He's been in situations like this before. He hands Ezekiel an old bottle of bleach with the top cut off, and he tells them, you just have to start bailing. Pretty soon, they're both bailing as fast as they can, but the seawater keeps crashing in on them. It's coming faster than they can get it out. And finally Jose's like, all right, kid. You're right. This is a lot. We should. We should pull in the line, and we should head back to shore. They start pulling in the line, and they get some big fish, like a couple sharks, and there's. They're knocking out the sharks. Pretty soon, there's just bright red shark blood swirling in the water over their feet. The water's sloshing. The boat is being tossed forward and back and left and right. They're being tossed around. More water is coming in, and Jose makes a tough decision. He decides they need to hurry up this process. They're going to need to get to land fast. He's not scared. He doesn't think they're going to die. But he respects the ocean, and he has seen colleagues die in conditions like this. So instead of pulling in the rest of the line, he saws through it with his knife, and it snaps and just disappears under the surface of the ocean. It's going to cost him a lot to replace the line. Like the equivalent of weeks, maybe months worth of work. But they're sitting deep in the water. The waves are picking up even more. It's dark now, the sunset, and the moonlight is flashing off the different angles of the waves. The water is just frothing black and white. He yells at Ezekiel to get down and just guns the motor and starts racing towards shore. Remember, shore is about five hours away. top speed. Jose's navigating these waves expertly. He knows exactly where to accelerate, how to angle the boat so it doesn't hit the trough between the waves. He's thinking like, this is going to be a hell of a drinking story when I get back. Like, if he had his normal buddy Ray with him, they'd be laughing, they'd be joking. It's serious and it's dangerous. But that doesn't mean you can't have a good time. Ezekiel, on the other hand, is now wailing to God, why am I being punished? Just kill me fast. Just don't make me suffer before I die. He's not bailing out the boat. He's wailing so hard that he's not helping. And I'm just picturing Jose in the back of the boat in his faded T shirt, maybe his balaclava. It's dark, but there is moonlight and there's lightning flashing around them. Salt water's flying everywhere. Jose's got one arm on the motor, his hands clenched like that takes muscle. And then he's trying to do all the bailing for both of them with the other hand. He's squinting, his teeth are clenched. He's doing what's got to be done. Finally, finally, they're going for hours. And one end of the sky starts getting lighter. It's coming up toward dawn, and between the peaks of the waves, Jose sees a line of mountains in the distance. They've made it through the night. They're almost back to shore. There's only an hour or two to go, and the waves aren't as bad anymore. Jose is exhausted. Ezekiel is still lying there, screaming that he's waiting to die. So Jose thinks, okay, things are getting better. Let's just take a quick food break. You gotta eat, get a morale boost. And then we'll do the last stretch, he's packed some smoked liver and tortillas, of course, his favorite. He dices a fresh tomato. Ezekiel is nauseous. He's seasick, but he manages a few bites because, you know, if Jose made it, you know, the food is good. And after a little bit, they start going again. But the motor is making weird noises, so Jose stops. He looks it over. He cleans the spark plugs. It seems okay. He pulls the cord to start it again, and nothing happens. That's weird. He pulls it again, harder. Nothing. Jose starts pulling so hard that the skin, the callus on his hands is ripping off. And the motor might as well be a rock. It's doing nothing. He gives it one more yank, and the pull cord snaps in half, and he has no oars in the boat. Without the motor, all they can do is drift. So now Jose pulls out his radio. He radios into his buds on shore, and he's like, hey, I hate to ask, but I need you to come get us. We're 20 miles offshore. The waves are way bigger than we are. His friend on the radio is like, no problem. No problem. You've had our back so many times, we got yours. Just put down your anchor and we'll come find you. Actually, Jose has helped so many people in the past that once the town figures out he's in trouble, people are just lining up, volunteering to come get him. And that's good, because there's actually other boats stuck out in the same storm right now, not just one. So there's a big rescue team getting together. But the thing is, Jose doesn't have an anchor. He can't just anchor the boat and wait. The water inside the boat is now knee deep, and they're still getting tossed around by these waves, which means that now they're tossing themselves around, running across the boats to try to balance the weight. And Jose's like, ezekiel, listen, people are coming to help us. We'll be fine. But we have to get some weight out of this boat. We gotta unload the fish we got. And the fish in the icebox that they have are big. They're like 50, 75 pounds. They're the size of duffel bags. And they start hoisting them overboard and just splashing them into the water. There's blood all over the water now. Shark fins start coming toward them, and Jose tries to radio in again, but now the radio is dead, too. The storm, the wind, the waves, they keep coming. And they fight it for another 24 hours straight. They're soaking wet. They're nauseous. They're so tired. The rescue crew has not shown up. They've been looking, and they actually send a plane out to fly overhead. But the pilot reports that the only thing below him, for as long as he can see, are just waves crashing into each other. And from above, the whole ocean looks white. Back in town, people start lighting candles outside of Jose's hut. They're holding vigils. It doesn't mean that they think he's dead. It is fairly common for these fishermen to go missing and then limp back into town weeks later. Like, maybe they get rescued by a ship, and then they have to ride along to the next port and work their way home. I think you could probably pick any one of these fishing towns, and you would hear survival stories that would blow your mind, that would be in the news for weeks if they happened in the United States. So people there have seen a lot. And also, they know Jose. They're like, if anyone can handle those waves, it's him. Meanwhile, Jose and Ezekiel have been fighting the storm for days and nights. And then suddenly, the wind clears. The waves melt down into one flat surface, this dark glass that stretches to every horizon. It's almost like they've been fighting the storm. They've been trapped in a nightmare, and now they're waking up into a new reality. And they have no sense of scale, no sense of direction, no sense of time. They don't know where they are, where. Where the boat has carried them. They don't know if it's been three days since they left shore or a week. And now they have very few supplies because they dumped so much of their heavy gear just to survive the storm. So they have a bucket, they have a knife, some clothes rope, some empty Clorox bottles that they use for bailing, but they don't have fish to eat. They don't have fish hooks because they threw out their fishing gear. They still have the boat's motor, but only because it's attached. Like, Jose would have absolutely dumped it if he could, because it is not working. Ezekiel's moaning even now on the smooth water. He's like, why couldn't I have just died? I could have gotten it over with. And Jose is way more optimistic. He's like, yeah, okay, we're stuck out here for now. But like, look at this boat. This boat just got us through this. He's like, it shouldn't be called Shrimper from the Coast Number three. I'm going to rename it. I. I'm Going to call it the Titanic. Because the Titanic was supposed to be unsinkable, but this boat really is. They're floating there. They're riding the Titanic. Every now and then, Jose sees a commercial flight way overhead, like, way too far to see them. It's not like they can signal for help. But it actually makes him happy because he's like, up there in the sky and that little dot above us, there's people sitting in comfy seats. They're drinking little plastic cups of Coca Cola or ginger ale. Maybe they're sitting with their kids. You know, we don't normally think of flying coach as the peak of comfort, but for Jose, in this moment, he's really loving seeing those planes and knowing that the people inside them are okay. Because down in this boat, in the newly dubbed Titanic, they're both okay and not okay. They're alive. That's. That's a big thing. The only food they have is one onion that somehow didn't fall overboard. Jose turns the ice box on its side so they can crawl inside it and get out of the sun. And it's. It's warm out, it's hot, but they feel cold just from the exhaustion. So they're cuddled together, they're hugging, they're getting comfort from each other's skin. And Ezekiel is in rough shape. He has some broken ribs from being thrown around by the waves. He's starting to get these raised sores on his skin from the salt. And they're both very thirsty. Their tongues feel like paper in their mouths. Jose's like, you gotta do what you gotta do. And he starts drinking his pee. And Ezekiel's horrified. He will not do it. And they're so hungry. Jose tries eating a jellyfish, but it's stinging his mouth and his gums. He starts fantasizing about eating his pinky finger on his left hand. He's like, I don't really use it. Like, I could. I could do that. And he's looking around for anything he could eat. And he feels these little vibrations on the boat and it's. It's coming from triggerfish, nibbling the algae on the bottom of it. Triggerfish are these. They're weird looking fish. They're. They're kind of like plates that have been tipped up on their side and. And they taste really good. But they have teeth just like straight up human looking teeth. And they're super aggro. So if you mess with one, they will take a bite out of you. Like not just bite you, but bite flesh out of You. Jose is watching these triggerfish with great interest. His mouth would be watering if he were hydrated enough to have any saliva at all. And he starts to notice that after they eat a bunch of algae, they'll just float there for a moment, just like people when we have a full belly. So he waits for those moments when they're sort of stunned. And he starts grabbing them and throwing them in the boat and they're biting his hands with their human teeth. It hurts, but it's totally worth it. He manages to kill a bunch of them and he cuts him up. He dries the meat in the sun. Ezekiel eats a little and then they throw the guts overboard and it attracts more fish. And it feels like it's working pretty well. They must be floating in a current or something because a bunch of trash is floating around them, which is totally exciting because they can take a stick and they can try to like scoop up anything that's floating by. They're getting sneakers, they're getting bottles. They grab everything they can. They don't know what they're going to need. A full trash bag floats by. They can smell it. It smells like a rotten trash bag. And they're so excited they manage to scoop it up. And they open it up just delicately, like this is their shopping hall. And they spread everything out. There's food scraps inside, there's moldy cabbage, there's little diced carrots that are rotten, and a little bit of curdled milk in the bottom of a carton. And they split everything evenly. They eat all of it. They even find a single piece of pre chewed bubble gum. And they cut it in half carefully with a knife. And they each get a tiny piece of this pre chewed gum. And it's so good. By day 10, they still have not found anything to drink except for a few drops here and there of rancid milk. And it's. They're getting to the point where they're struggling to breathe. Like it. When you're that dehydrated, you can't breathe well, your body stops working. Their heartbeat is constantly like racing and fluttering. And salvation comes in the form of a sea turtle because, and this is something I know other castaways have done also. When you're trapped at sea, you can drink sea turtle blood. And turtles are really shy. They'll avoid motors. But if you're just drifting, they'll come right up to you. So this next part, I apologize is, is a little gross. You can fast forward, but Jose feels a sea turtle bump the boat, and he grabs it. It's big. And he kills the turtle, and he takes a piece of tubing out of the motor and just sticks it into the turtle like a straw and then just drinks the turtle through the straw. He says it's like a slushy. I'm sorry, Ezekiel won't do this. He says drinking blood is a sin. It's also gross. But he will eat the turtle meat. So they catch some more turtles. More turtles are coming around, and they actually put some water in part of the boat and make sort of a turtle tank and keep the turtles there alive so they have easy access. They can just take what they need. This reminds me a little bit of the story of the Orin, which I told Sarah Marshall on the podcast you're wrong about. I'll put a link in the show notes. But in the Orelan, a survivor on a lifeboat whose name was Marilyn actually harnessed multiple sea turtles to try to pull them through the ocean, which was only moderately successful, but still amazing. And I think about that pretty often. Thank goodness. The turtle blood and the moisture in the meat that Ezekiel's eating keeps them alive long enough that it finally starts to rain after about two weeks. And they've gathered so much trash and empty bottles that they're able to catch a bunch of the rainwater and store it, try to make it last as long as they can. And they've now been floating at sea for three weeks. And Ezekiel's getting really thin. He's wearing this hoodie that has a skull on it. And Jose's not saying anything, but he keeps thinking as he's looking at him, like, that skull looks like him. It looked like you look at him, and it's like two skulls next to each other. So Jose decides, like, he's gotta find a way to get Ezekiel to eat. Like you. You can't be picky on a lifeboat. He takes a piece of metal from the motor, and he. He bends it into a big hook shape, and he spends hours sharpening it by filing it against the surface of the boat. And then he throws some guts overboard as bait and hangs his arm overboard and just waits for a fish to swim over the hook so he can yank it upward and impale the fish. This takes definitely some trial and error, Many, many, many hours of patience, but he manages, finally, to catch a mahi mahi. And mahi mahi are large. They're delicious, and they're beautiful. They have these huge heads and flat faces, and they're this shimmering, bright turquoise green. And so it's flapping wildly in the boat. It's slamming around, knocking things over. And as it's doing that, it's changing from yellow to silver to green and this bright blue until. Until finally he knocks it out. Jose prepares this meat so lovingly. He dices it into the tiniest uniform cubes, and he arranges it like they're at a very fine restaurant, garnished with a single drop of seawater. And he. He gives it to Ezekiel, who eats it. And Jose is so proud. These two men. Like, yeah, at the beginning, Jose was definitely annoyed with Ezekiel. Like, he felt like Ezekiel was just really negative and. And not that helpful during the storm. But now that they're out there together, they're getting so attached to each other, they're really coming to love each other. I mean, literally, during the heat of the day, when the. When the sun is so bright, they curl up together in this icebox for shade, and their skin is raw. They're getting bruises where their bones are poking through. And they're just curled up. They're snuggling. They have these long conversations about their childhoods and their dreams, and they start role playing. Like, they both close their eyes and cuddle up and imagine they're somewhere else. Like, the two of them are friends back at home. Ezekiel say, like, hey, hey, you know, I think I'm gonna run to the grocery store. Like, do you want anything? Are you. Are you running low? Can I pick anything up? And Jose is like, they have. They have fresh tortillas. Can you get me some fresh tortillas? And Ezekiel's like, of course. Yeah, I got you, man. And, like, what about tamales? I was gonna get some tamales. And they just. They keep their eyes closed for hours and hold on to each other and create these imaginary worlds that they can just slip into whenever they want and need it. Every night, as it's getting dark, they put bait, fish guts and bones, whatever they have into bleach bottles and hang them overboard on strings. And the idea is that these are fish traps. Like, maybe fish will swim in for the bait and then get stuck. And it doesn't really work. Like, they. These fish. These fish traps are not catching fish, but it still becomes a ritual for them, because when they catch. Put out these traps at night, then they can curl up and go to sleep thinking that maybe there's at least some chance that in the morning their circumstances will be better. They may wake up to new fish. It just lets them go to sleep with hope. Jose is also getting better at catching birds. And the way he does it is by being extremely patient. The one thing he has plenty of is time. So birds will land on the boat and he'll just get closer and closer to them, barely moving. He, he's trying to picture a cat and then imagine himself as a cat. And then eventually he gets close and he'll, he'll pounce and, and grab a bird and they can eat it. He's also, he's not counting the days, but he's watching the moon every night. So he thinks they've been there for, for over a month, maybe five weeks, which means it's almost Christmas and they decide to throw a celebration. These, these birds they're catching have very little meat on them, but at least it's a change from the fish. So Jose catches a bunch of birds and he prepares these little strips of meat. He dries them in the sun on the hot fiberglass and they, they wish each other merry Christmas and throw a feast. They're imagining it's bigger than it is, but it's still something. They're eating this really beautifully prepared raw bird meat. And a few hours later, Ezekiel's body jackknifes. He just folds in half and starts throwing up. And Jose is terrified. They've been rationing their water, but he immediately just is trying to get Ezekiel to drink as much as he possibly can. And this goes on for hours. Foam starts just pouring out of Ezekiel's mouth and Jose can't figure out what it is. He starts thinking about what they ate. And there's, there's a pile of bird guts from their Christmas dinner. And he, he starts looking at them and cutting them open. And in one of the birds stomachs, he finds a little snake. Like it's, it's brown on top and it's bright yellow on the bottom. It's an extremely venomous sea snake. And somehow eating the bird meat had exposed Ezekiel to that venom. Now if this snake bites you, it can kill you. But what if you eat a bird that ate it? Like, they don't, they don't know what's going to happen. Probably nobody knows what happens in this circumstance. And Ezekiel is still foaming and moaning and Jose is trying to take care of him and give him more and more water. And also he's braced for the poison to hit him next. But finally, after a few hours, Ezekiel starts to recover. And luckily, Jose doesn't get sick at all. Somehow, somehow it missed him. But as Christmases go, not great. And especially because from then on, Ezekiel refuses to eat the birds. He can't, he can't stand it. He can't bring himself to eat bird meat even when, you know, obviously they begin inspecting the guts first, but. But it doesn't matter. He just can't do it. Something really strange is happening in the ocean around them too. For a while they were drifting and there were some waves and they were, they were lucky with the weather. It was warm, it was sometimes breezy, sometimes rainy, and they could catch water. But they've made it into this strip of water in the middle of the Atlantic that's called the doldrums because nothing there moves. Like in the past, ships would just get stuck there. Sailboats wouldn't be able to leave. Like sailors have just died there because they run out of food and water. This area is so well known. This is such a well known problem. It's in a very famous old poem, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which is by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. And he wrote, and you may have heard this, I didn't know where it was from. He says, day after day, day after day, we stuck no breath nor motion, as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean. And then goes on to say, water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. This is where Jose and Ezekiel find themselves completely stagnant. Month three on their little boat. It's so still and quiet out there. There's just the tiniest thumps from the water. It's. It's glassy. Every horizon is so far away. They are trying to keep the boat clean as they're just sitting there in the middle of the ocean. But it has so many layers of fish juice and guts and bird poop and vomit and they're not drifting, they're not moving, so the smell is just rising around them as they're baking in the heat. On the best days, when they're doing as well as possible, Ezekiel sings and he has a beautiful voice. And on the worst days, these violent thunderstorms seem to come out of nowhere. Just deep rolling thunder, lightning, like a strobe light, and these really bizarre sudden whirlwinds that they don't move sideways, but they like lift water around them up into the air so high that they can see fish silhouetted in these funnels of water. It's terrifying. And then when it rains, they're trying to capture the water. They've. They've found enough trash that they have really good ways of storing water now. And, and Ezekiel, he's. He's very religious. He Thinks he's been given what he deserves, that he's a sinner and that he was given this as punishment. That's why he's in this situation. And so when sharks come around them, which is pretty much every day, he starts trying to throw himself overboard, trying to die. And several times, Jose has to grab him and wrestle him down and trap him in the icebox, flip it over on top of him and sit on top of it while Ezekiel is sobbing beneath him until he finally quiets down and Jose knows it's safe to let him out. Ezekiel stops singing. He stops eating anything. Jose prepares fish as beautifully as he knows how. He makes these paper thin slices of meat, and he. He opens Ezekiel's mouth for him and puts the slices of fish on his tongue inside his mouth, so that instincts will take over and Ezekiel will swallow one tiny piece at a time. And he. He wraps Ezekiel up in his arms, and they're both so thin. And he says, like, hey, hey, listen to me. You know. You know what we're gonna do? You know what we're gonna do after this? We're gonna start a bakery. You and me. Every morning we're gonna get up, we're gonna wake up in our soft beds, and the sun will be rising. Maybe it won't even be up yet. And we're gonna knead the dough. It's gonna smell so good. And by the time we open, people will be lined up in the street for our bread. Will get you a bicycle with a basket in front, and you can ride around on this bicycle and have loaves of bread in front of you and just be selling it from your bicycle. We'll have lovers. We'll eat warm tortillas for every meal. Like Ezekiel. You. We have to start this bakery. You can't. You can't give up. And then when. When he's not talking to Ezekiel, Jose is thinking about his own daughter back in El Salvador. He hasn't seen her since she was one, since he had to flee the country. And he knows. He knows he left because at the time, he felt that he had to. He was going to be killed. But all he wants is to see her again, to live, to see her again, to do everything he can to make up for the time that he's been gone. He says, ezekiel, listen to me. I need you to live. Because what if I don't make it? If I. If something happens to me out here? I need you to be able to give a message to my daughter. Jose thinks it's. It's not that he really doubts he's going to live. He still has this big kernel of optimism inside him. But he thinks that taking care of Ezekiel is giving him something to live for. And so maybe Ezekiel needs the same. Like, he's trying to give Ezekiel jobs so that Ezekiel will hold on to life, so that he can try to fulfill them. And it. Ezekiel, it's not working. He just. He starts begging Jose. He says, please, please don't eat me if I die. And Jose says, I. I won't. I won't, but you're not going to die. And then one morning, Ezekiel says, I. I am. I'm dying now. And Jose tries to pour water in his mouth, but he doesn't drink it. And just like that, he's not breathing anymore. His eyes are closed. He's. He's wearing his skull hoodie. It's so faded from the sun, he looks like he's just taking a nap in the sunshine. And so Jose keeps talking to him. He says, you know Ezekiel Pinata. He calls him by his nickname. There. There's going to be such a party when we get back. There's going to be. There's going to be music. There will be beer, dancing, beautiful women. We're going to be with our friends in the morning. We'll go to our bakery. We. We won't even care that we're hungover. He keeps talking to Ezekiel. And days. Days pass, and Ezekiel's body hardens. He. He dries in the sun. And Jose just keeps talking. Sitting with his friend, holding his hand. He. He says, you know, how. How is. How is death? And he speaks for Ezekiel out loud. He says. He responds, well, it's. It's beautiful. I'm. I'm waiting. I'm waiting for you here on the other side. And Jose, you know, responds to himself and says, ah, but I'm not coming yet. I'm not coming yet. And for six days, they talk like this, about what death is like and about. About life. And then suddenly, it's like Jose wakes up. Something clicks, and he. He sees himself there, floating in this boat, talking to a corpse. And he sees how much he's. He's believed these conversations. He's. He's been entering this state where. Where they felt so real. And he. He's horrified. He takes off Ezekiel's hoodie and he. He puts it on himself. And then he gently lays his friend in the water. And instead of watching Ezekiel's body drift or sink down, he. He faints. At that moment, everything goes black. And he Wakes up on the floor of the boat, completely alone. Jose. This whole time, Jose has been doing, let's be real, pretty much all of the fishing. So suddenly he has twice as much food. He wants to share it, but he can't. And when birds land on the boat, he. He catches them. Every single one he can. He has. He has more birds now than he can eat. And he doesn't want to hurt them, but he needs to live. So with each bird, he'll. He'll break one wing and then, so they can't fly away. And then they live on the boat with him. And soon he's surrounded by birds, dozens of birds. They're calling and pooping and feathers are stuck to everything. And when he's hungry, when it's mealtime, he'll eat a bird or three. And the rest of the time, he just. He just talks to them. He just sits there surrounded by this flock. It's. The boat is turning into an ecosystem, and his. His body is becoming one, too. He uses seaweed as a pillow to rest his head. He pulls a live crab out of his ear that's moved in there. He's been floating now for half a year now. Jose has great respect for sharks, and there are sharks around him. He says, quote, this is from an interview later with the author Jonathan Franklin. People think that a shark bite is a clean cut, but that's the Hollywood version. You have to realize that these sharks have seven rows of teeth, and when they grab, they rip back. And what is left looks like long, thin pieces of string cheese. So he is fully aware of what shark bites do to people. But he also wants to swim. He wants to get into the water. He wants to get out of the Titanic sometimes. So he develops a method where he'll throw bird feet overboard and see if any sharks show up. And usually they do terrifyingly fast. It's so scary because he can be looking down into the water, it seems like. It seems like he can see everything. Like there's these columns of sunlight going. Going all the way down. And then suddenly a shark will just be there out of nowhere. There's no warning. They're always close. But if he throws bird feet in and a shark doesn't show up, if they don't eat the feet, he risks it. Sometimes he'll sort of slide himself overboard into the cold water. And everything in his body hurts so bad, his joints and his skin. But for just a moment, he can float. And the pain fades. And his hair is long now. His beard's long. They're swirling around his face. He can swim under and around the boat and pry barnacles off it to eat them. He gives himself just a few minutes at a time of this heavenly floating before he climbs back on board. One night it's still dark out and he wakes up to the feeling of the boat scraping on land. He climbs out of the icebox. He's so excited. And he looks around and he's still at sea. He can see the stars curving down to every horizon. And he's so confused. He looks down into the dark water and in the moonlight there's these strange spots, the strange design. And he realizes that he is now on top of a whale shark. It's so big that he can't see the ends of it. He reaches down and he. He runs his finger, his. His fingers along it. It's skin is rough. And he just lies there all night. And the whale shark is still there in the morning. It's still there. It has suckerfish hanging off it. He feels instantly that he has another friend. He starts talking to the whale shark. He's like, oh, can I sit on your back? Can you, can you give me a ride to shore? He starts telling the whale shark stories. Like he's talking about soccer games he's seen. He sings songs. He doesn't have a great voice. But the whale shark doesn't care. And actually it seems to like hanging out with him. It's there for days. It scratches its back on the boat or it'll do this thing where it'll open its mouth, which is enormous and sort of chase schools of fish upward. And Jose is trying to help out his new friend. Like he'll stick his arms in the water and try to shoo the fish into the whale shark's mouth. And he. They're looking out for each other and. And after a week, the whale shark disappears. And then a baby whale shark shows up and spends a few days with him and Jose. This is like an even deeper mark of friendship. He's like the. The whale shark liked me so much it sent its kid to say hi. At this point, so many months have passed that something pretty unique has happened. Like, usually in a survival situation, people are getting progressively weaker. And the goal, the biggest goal they have, is to slow that progression in the hopes of getting out or being rescued before the progression reaches its natural endpoint, which is dying. And to some degree, we're all always on that track. Like human life is a progression toward death with ups and downs along the way. But sometimes we get into an accelerated course. And being trapped in a lifeboat is usually one of those situations. But what Jose has managed to do with the systems he's created is stall out that progression. He's reached a kind of homeostasis. He has drinking water. He spends a few hours a day getting food. And it's. It's not just enough food, but he actually starts intentionally cutting back on how much he's eating. Because if he wanted to, he could just sit there eating all day long. He. He does push ups and sit ups. He. He start hobbies. He turns fishbones into needles and he works on sewing. He sort of pulls individual threads out of his clothing and uses them to sew. He makes sandals out of shark skin. He'll lie back on his back at night and look up at the stars and just invent new constellations and see how they're moving. He collects the best feathers he can find from his birds and makes a beautiful array of them. And he talks to the ocean, you know, now the ocean is his companion. He. He sees her as a woman. And he says to this, to this woman he's kind of flirting with, like, won't you carry me to shore? I'll be out of your hair. You know, we're really getting to know each other. And. And in. In the middays when the sun is so hot and it's so humid out there, it's like the air is almost milky. He sinks into these long daydreams that are so elaborate, they feel real. And he's still watching the moon. He's counting the months, but he's still not counting the days. And he knows more or less when the moon has changed 12 times. He's been floating for one year. One day the air around him turns acid. His eyes are burning. He starts throwing up and it's hard to even see. But he realizes as he drifts that he's floating toward a dead whale. It's. It's not his friend. It's a different whale, but it's floating on the surface being eaten from every side at once by birds and sharks and fish. And things are slamming into it from below. It's shuddering. There's birds on it he doesn't even recognize. And some of them land on his boat and he traps them and they smell so bad. Except a few of the birds have metal bands on their legs. And. And for those birds, he doesn't trap them. He. He scratches help onto the band and he lets the bird go. And he. He knows in reality there's no way that someone's going to see that bird and find him on the ocean and save him. But it's still the only way he knows how to send a message that might somehow, at some point, reach someone in the world. He finally drifts away from the dead whale, thank God. And one of the birds he got is this really big black bird. He's not sure what it is. It's like the size of a goose, and it's friendly. He starts taming it with pieces of fish. He names it Poncho. And pretty soon he can, like, tap his fingers on the boat. And Pancho will hop on over and Pancho will sing. And Jose sings back to him. He's. He's trying to learn Pancho's language, you know, repeating the sounds. At this point, Jose has, like, 40 birds in the boat. He dries a pufferfish to make. Make a ball, and he'll throw it into the crowd of birds, and they'll bop it around with their beaks. And when he's doing this, he names the birds after different soccer players that he likes. And he'll set up these elaborate games, like he has a Bird World cup in which Mexico always wins. And he and Pancho will. Will sit and watch these bird soccer games together. They'll cheer for goals. You know, they're talking to each other, and he'll say, you know, Pancho, we should. We should get married. And at night, Pancho sleeps in his arms. The boat keeps drifting. It's finally. Finally leaving the doldrums. And the ocean changes so that the boat, the Titanic, is moving now. It's moving so fast in currents that sometimes it leaves a wake. And the waves are getting bigger. So this is good. This is progress. But there's also fewer fish. There's fewer sharks. There's fewer birds. And he starts eating through the birds he has. He doesn't have a soccer team anymore. He's getting thin. He doesn't have fish to feed Pancho. He starts eating off his own fingernails. Pancho's been with him now for, I think, three months. And Jose starts joking these sort of dark, dark humor, like, my friend, I think you're an endangered species. But he can't bring himself to eat Poncho. He cuts off his beard and. And eats that instead. Just wadding up pieces of beard in his mouth, and it tastes like salt. He grinds fishbones into flour, and he eats that flour until finally he's out of bones, too. And when this time comes, when he hasn't eaten a bite of food for days. He eats Poncho, and he does it fast at night because he. He really doesn't want poncho in pain. And he says this. This action felt like cannibalism. It felt like something he thought he would never do. He says, I ate him, but I didn't ask him to forgive me. Historically, Jose hasn't been the biggest God's plan kind of guy. But a year floating changes things. And maybe. Maybe it's God's plan. Maybe it's just Jose's plan. Maybe. But he starts thinking, there's gotta be a reason I'm still alive. There's so many times I could have died. There's so many times I could have killed myself. Why haven't I? Why am I still here? What is the purpose of this? And he. He decides that the purpose of this ordeal, presuming he'll eventually make it out, is to be an example to people who think they are fully out of hope. And this idea that he can be this example, such a clear example of someone surviving the imposs, it gives him a reason to keep not killing himself. But as his body is breaking down from hunger, he starts realizing that it doesn't matter if he kills himself or not. He's still gonna die. He is feeling his body go through the same processes he watched in Ezekiel a year before. His toes go numb, and then his feet go numb, and then his legs go numb. His muscles are shriveling up. He starts noticing this smell around him that's. That's sweet, like a rotting corpse. And he. He realizes that it is coming from him. Most of the time now, he's just lying down. He's disappearing into his mind, into his imagination. He's imagining bakeries and parties and sex and tortillas. Oh, my God. He imagines tortillas at so much length. It starts to rain. And it rains for days. And he has to bail, and he doesn't want to bail. And it's raining so hard that the surface of the ocean, it's like it's boiling around him with a million tiny drops. And finally he starts bailing one scoop at a time. And it feels heavy. He's lifting up one scoop and he's pouring it out. And it's so hard. And he's looking out through this mist, and there's an island. A deserted island. He. He drops a feather in the water, and he watches it drift so he can tell which way the boat is moving. And he's moving straight for the island. He can't. He can't steer. And he can't jump out and swim there because even if he were strong enough, which he's definitely not, he'd be eaten by sharks. But this boat keeps drifting through the pounding rain until he's getting closer. And he sees palm trees, he sees waves breaking. He waits until he's so close. And he jumps overboard because he's afraid now the Titanic is going to get smashed on the beach. And his feet touch ground. They touch sand. There's jellyfish stinging his legs. And it's hard to wade through the breakers. His muscles are almost gone. And waves. The undertow is strong. It's trying to pull him back out to sea. But the ocean, she lifts him up one more time and carries him up on the shore. And he's on his hands and knees on the sand. It feels like it's rocking below him. He starts crawling uphill. He has this instinct to crawl for high ground like he's a bug. And the rain is hitting his back. And behind him, the. The Titanic, with all of his supplies, is drifting away. Several times he collapses just flat on his stomach. But finally he pulls himself all the way up this hill. He reaches the summit. It feels like he's crawled an enormous height, even though the hill is barely taller than he is. And at the top, there's flowers. And he starts shoving them into his mouth. There's grass and palm trees and colorful flowers. It must have seemed Technicolor to him, like. But whenever he moves, this. This whole world around him starts spinning. And he gets scared because he realizes his boat is gone. Like on. On the boat, he had a system. And now he's alone on an island and he has nothing at all. And then he sees something that terrifies him even more. There's a flash of red through the palm trees. And it's a shirt hanging on a clothesline. And he hears a rooster. It sounds like a scream. And you know, we read familiarity as safety. And for Jose, this feels like an end. He's not able to process it as rescue. He's gonna be okay. He's safe. He is alive. And sometimes that's scary as hell. So his brain is panicking about every single change. His boat is gone. How is he gonna live? There's. There's people. What if they hurt him and they do find him? There's a couple there named Russell and Emmy. And it turns out he's on the Marshall Islands. They don't speak Spanish. He doesn't speak Marshallese, but they take care of him. They bring him inside. They feed him. They get him to a bigger island. And Russell even goes out and tracks down and finds the Titanic for him before it drifts totally away. And for Jose, this is a hard transition. It. It doesn't feel like he thought it would. People bring him to a hospital, and he. He has the sense that he's being imprisoned against his will. He doesn't recognize himself in the mirror. His. His hair used to be dark brown, and now it's long and red from the sun. He was at Sea for 438 days. Instantly, there's a media circus. There's journalists lined up outside his room. People think he's a fraud. But then they're confused because they're like, wouldn't a fraud be trying to get as much attention as possible? Like, researchers chart ocean currents, and they determine that what he's saying, his trip actually lines up perfectly. Eventually, Jose does collaborate on a book, but he's not maximizing his profits. He's not trying to become famous. He visits Ezekiel's family. He wants so badly to give them their son's final messages. And this. This goes well. It feels like a really meaningful visit for him. But as soon as his book comes out, Ezekiel's family sues him for a million dollars because they say he ate their son. Which eventually the lawsuits dropped. You know, people want money, but it's. It's not how he expected things to go. And Jose's priorities now are different. He. He doesn't want to prove things. He doesn't want to be wealthy. He's anemic, and he has night terrors, and he's really easily startled. He just wants simple things. He wants these simple pleasures back that he used to have. He wants the kinds of things he was dreaming about in the boat. It's not fame, it's tortillas. And he wants more than anything else to see his daughter, to be part of her life, to be at her quinceanera. So he goes home to her. He goes home to his family in El Salvador. Even though he's scared, he's terrified. He always thought if he ever went back, he would be in hiding. But now he decides to just walk down Main street to walk into town with his head high. He has survived the entire ocean. He can survive his hometown, too. My main source for this episode is the book 438 Days by Jonathan Franklin, which is a collaboration with Jose Salvador Alvarenga. And it is so good. It's so good. It goes so much deeper than this podcast. It has amazing details. It's beautifully written, it's heartfelt. I recommend it completely. And then a couple magazine and newspaper articles that I'm going to link link in the show Notes the story of the woman who tried to harness sea turtles is recounted also very beautifully in the book A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhurst Research, writing, narration and editing by me, Blair Braverman Music and audio production by Brandon Chevelle thank you so much as always for spending this time with me and I'll be back with another true story in two weeks. Take care. There.